Photo by Valentin Lacoste on Unsplash
Down in the hole (of undetermined origin and geographic placement), where the dreaming stopped for thirty-five seconds straight, there was a man still lying wake and not thinking about anything of consequence to the world. The rest of his compatriots were off to sleepy-bye after having done their bit to solve the most of everything, but he had done next to nothing, so, he just kept his eyes open and gazing at the lip of the hole. It was pretty far up from where he was — that was his first thought — milliseconds ago. Now, he was thinking about the things his compatriots had done, the glory they had won, and the fact that he was being lumped in with them, though, and he knew this, he had no business being in their hole. They were truly honorable and he was not.
Later (undetermined length of time), on the surface, the Restless Man waited by the side of a road for the rest of his compatriots to return from the front and bring news of enemies laid low. They’d been gone from the hole since daybreak and he’d been left by the side of the road since the mid-day moments. The cloudless sky was striking in its blue. The fence he leaned against had no distinguishing qualities, except for the fact that it was a fence and it looked as if horses had done what horses sometime do to the top of its pickets, which is to say they were gnawed. The Restless Man wished they’d move him to the hole where the other non-combatants stayed, the normies, but that was not a possibility. People like the Restless Man always got to enjoy the benefits of admiration without doing the admirable thing. When his father was alive (time since father’s passing is unknown to the Restless Man), he was the same way — always in some hole where he did not belong. People looked the other way, then, too. The vehicle (a bus, maybe, it’s unclear) stopped by the side of the road and the accordion door opened and the Restless Man could see that there were far fewer of his compatriots now then there were before and the ones that were left were bloody, cold, and still afraid. No one spoke to the Restless Man. One of his compatriots, who was bleeding from his head, flicked blood on the Restless Man’s uniform to sell the charade for when the vehicle made it back to the place where all the holes were dug and all men lived.
The interior of the hole is circular and narrow and was not dug for comfort like some of the other holes in his country. The diameter of the hole is such that it fit the cots the men slept on and nothing else. To get into his cot the Restless Man has to crawl on his hands and knees over the other cots. Everyone laid perfectly still when they slept as to not disturb their neighbor with excessive rolling. In the very center of the hole is another hole, this one small and used for waste. The standing directive was that if a fighting man needed the use of the waste hole during the night, they held it until morning because theirs was a life of sacrifice for the unit. The Restless Man was given a bucket to place under his cot and he sometimes used it. Never once did any of his neighbors ask him for use of his special bucket and the Restless Man found this fact to be so illustrative of his own falseness that he began only using his special bucket when the pain of attempting to hold it became so great that he could no longer stand it and had to give in to his undisciplined urges. The fighting men slept soundly because of exhaustion; the Restless Man did not sleep at all. It wasn’t the charade the weighed on him and kept him up, he knew what society demanded of him, and he was a willing accomplice in its orderly operation. He actually had no earthly idea why he never slept, or, why not sleeping affected him so little. It had been thirty-eight seconds since he last slept.
In the future (so far down the line as to be categorized as speculative), a rope was lowered into the hole and the Restless Man heard a booming voice from above call his name and instruct him to tie the rope around his cot and then lie in his cot and not to move a muscle. The assent took .5 seconds but it felt longer. He knew the faces of the honorable men would not be upturned and grimacing at his assentation from the plain hole they all occupied. He knew they’d be sitting on the edge of their cots and staring forward and not thinking about the basic unfairness that he was being plucked to be placed in the spacious and luxurious Hole of Holes with the other chosen. He knew their way was not the way of grudge and grievance but he felt as if he could feel those eyes looking through the bottom of his cot and exposing his charade for what it really was, if only to the Restless Man himself. He felt as if he knew that they knew, and that in their knowing they couldn’t help but harbor ill-will for the Restless Man. This, of course, was not true. The Restless Man wasn’t the only one who felt this way. Everyone who made the assent from an honorable hole felt it at some point, too.
After that the Restless Man slept again, and sometimes, when he wakes in the middle of the night from a dream, he’d take the elevator to the lip of the Hole of Holes and he’d make his way back to where his old hole once was and he’d walk the ground that covered it and he’d think of all those men, still down there, and what they felt when the first shovelful fell like snow on their heads and he knew they must have hated him, then. They must have hated him with everything they had, then.
Scott Mitchel May is a writer living in rural Wisconsin with his family.